The most unfortunate thing about the DragonStrike board game that was kickstarted last year is the name; there’s at least two, and possibly three, games by that name already. Potential players have got to be asking themselves if this is a remake of one of the older games, maybe the one with a dragon with a motorized head?
I’ve written before, but it bears repeating — this board game is a re-imagining of the old SSI gold box dragon flight simulator of the same name. There, you took on the role of a dragon rider fighting the good fight in D&D’s “DragonLance” setting. You would take on various missions that could include scouting, bombarding ground targets, chasing down ships, or attacking other riders in the air, jockeying for the perfect angle to scourge them with a breath weapon or push them to their deaths with a stab of your dragon lance.
Fighting Hedgehog’s “DragonStrike” brings that combat to the table.
The version of the game I backed came with a thick neoprene play mat, four pre-painted dragons and riders (red, white, copper and bronze), four double thickness player board, four maneuver decks, pawns to track dragon condition and speed on the player boards, five silver “dragon dice”, map decorations and hazards, and a four minute timer.
The play goes in turns:
- Each player secretly chooses a maneuver from a deck of 40. These can increase or decrease speed, turn, do an acrobatic move and so on. Higher difficulty maneuvers can leave the dragon exhausted.
- Everyone reveals their maneuvers, makes any required skill checks, and moves their dragons, perhaps running into board hazards.
- Old hazards are removed.
- Each player attacks or adds new hazards.
Play continues until the scenario turn limit is reached, or one side has no more active dragons.
We played two full games last night; the opening scenario (just a dogfight), and then we did the same again, with better knowledge of how to play. The good dragon team, me and my SO, won the first game by being the team to first exhaust an enemy dragon. The evil dragons won the second round by being the last left on the table.
My dragon was so exhausted after some early maneuvering that I was gliding around the outside of the scrum, hoping to catch my dragon’s breath so we could run back in, but I was pursued by the red and was unable to dodge.
We didn’t bother with the timer; four minutes was far too long. We also didn’t really bother with turn order or who was “the sharp edge” or “the dull edge”; everyone just went simultaneously and where two dragons attacked each other simultaneously, we talked it out.
“Math heavy” was a term used more than once during the play. The dragon dice rolls weren’t clear and we kept changing it up as we went over the rules again and again to see if we dodged, took damage and so on. I think it will become more obvious as we settle into the game.
And settle in, we will. I asked everyone if we should bring it to the table again, and it was unanimous. People love fighting dragons. We’ll start on the specific scenarios next time.
But next time, we’ll be back in Frosthaven (I hope). But maybe everyone will insist on playing DragonStrike again, and if they do, I guess we will. It’s a fun, fast paced way to spend a game night. I’m a little sad I didn’t pledge for the expansion now. That would have brought two more pre-painted dragons (green and silver), a second mat and other doodads. Then we could have brought it to the bigger game night, as it would then support 6-8 players.
